


these tornadoes are for you

by anchors (harbingers)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ambiguous Relationships, M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:54:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29036562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harbingers/pseuds/anchors
Summary: “Is it easy, falling in love?”Jaemin smokes these days. It goes unnoticed and unmentioned. When they’re in the parking lot of Pasadena’s oldest parks, watching moonlight fixate on the hood of Jeno’s Jeep Wrangler. “You’ll have to ask Jeno about it.”
Relationships: Lee Jeno/Na Jaemin
Comments: 10
Kudos: 16





	these tornadoes are for you

Renjun feels like he’s standing at the edge of the world. There’s a cliff, a piece of paper evaporating in the bloody corners of his mouth. And then, there stands himself — only perched, his lungs delivering its last beat, it’s last good-bye. And you stop, because when you open your eyes, you come to the realization that it’s not the edge of the world you stand on top of, it’s the backseat of Jeno’s Jeep Wrangler. He can taste the cheap beer bought from the food mart three miles from the only running juke box dinner that sells the best chocolate malts in town. 

His legs feel like they might shake, shatter in the wind and float away like sawdust. Jaemin stares at him benevolently, like you hold the key to the greatest of secrets, or the eighth wonder is the treasure inside your eyes. “How do you feel right now?” 

Jeno drives in the front seat, peering through the mirror — a broad smile that could swallow the whole sea stretches on shore as Renjun lifts his hands from the top of the roof, letting go. He should learn to let go, letting go is the hardest part, after grief that washes like the beach rocks, or the grains of salt you swallow like pills. “Alive.” Renjun exhales. 

He drives, Renjun flies and Jaemin watches, always gazing with utter adoration that can never be misplaced. It so happens that they pass under a tunnel, the same one that he bikes over everyday at the crack of dawn. It’s like vertigo, because Renjun is hanging from the edge of the world, and then there’s Jaemin’s voice and it goes;  _ don’t look down.  _

“Be careful, or you might slip.” Jeno tells him, staring at the bottom of his mint tinted sunglasses, and Renjun feels a dip in his stomach, infiltrating the sweet autumn air as the cool air brushes against his cheek. 

“Let him have fun.” Jaemin muses, hand curling over the steering wheel where Jeno’s hand lays. And Renjun stares up at the concrete tunnel, and he drives and drives, he drives himself insane. 

  
  
  
  
  


A letter arrives in the mail. Renjun doesn’t open it. It remains unopened. He starts to live, and often nights he can’t breathe. Not breathing is so much easier isn’t it? A choker around your neck, two hands, twice becomes four and you’re powerless. Renjun writes to Emily Dickinson, when death does not greet him during a stormy night. The letter ends up in the trash, torn up and bloodied fingernails, unsealed beds that map the bottle of skin. And when the moon refuses to live in the lining of your skin, just like Pablo Neruda hails, Renjun is lost. A set of woods, foot trekking in snow, heavy piles clotting under his feet and the more he walks, the more difficult it is to continue his journey. 

Pasadena’s roads form a line, tight rope to board onto, and another journey continues. Downtown holds some charm, when Renjun walks down the streets, lights flickering like christmas and laughter creeps in his ear like a plague. The town square is decent for ice-skating in the winter, holding mini concerts when the weather warms up earlier in the year. You drive your bicycle down the lanes, whichever one you choose will decide your fate, and in the winter you die of frostbite. Or it's in the arid humid heat, wearing nothing but board shorts and Jeno’s lacrosse jersey two sizes too big while snarling down two cheesy hot dogs with extra sauerkraut and pickles. 

And when Jaemin hands you an extra large coca-cola freeze, as you sit on the side of the gas station. It stings the roof of your tongue at your first sip, hands warm, that you might melt or burn up in the atmosphere. Renjun starves in Pasadena’s tornados, hands once marked with blood, strings caught in thorns around his fingers. 

  
  
  
  


Donghyuck visits his dreams, when Renjun accidentally falls asleep at his desk, Romeo and Juliet dance along your desk, when you find yourself writing a different ending. It begins with the marble of poison, blackberry staining your shirt, wet inside your mouth when you open wider. Shakespeare holds you, in the middle of the year when the cliff you once stood dares to crumble; and it’s the two of you sitting on a pew praying that the nightmares won’t arrive. 

It’s not the first time. That he gets a visit. It occurs after a post-lacrosse game that Jaemin drags him to, and they cheer on Jeno while grasping three bags of buttery popcorn and large sprites. Jaemin clutches his arm around Renjun and they jump along with the crowd every time the home team scores.

He’s wearing Jeno’s large varsity jacket, hanging onto the slopes of slim shoulders while Renjun smiles widely. At the way Jaemin’s smile lights up in the stadium, and how the rush curdles like a weeks old worth of moldy bread. 

“Hungry?” Jeno takes them bring chocolate malts, seasoned fries and chicken tenders at the local diner they often visit. Jaemin finds a home in Jeno’s lap as he sits across from them, taking one bite at a time. 

“Where should we go after this?” 

“The pier?” 

Jaemin sneaks a fry into Jeno’s mouth, heartfelt and soapy eyes that rinse under cold water and Renjun can see the future, auburn, peppered windows shut and the boxes outside soak to the sidewalk. “What do you think, Renjun?” Paprika dotted the bottom of Jaemin’s lips when he spoke. “Where would you like to go?” 

He doesn’t realize it. When he holds his breath underwater that he’s like a goldfish, trapped in a bowl, fresh or saltwater had no endeavors to his unbecoming. And when he swims in circles, hitting the bottom of the fish bowl — Renjun draws his last breath. 

“Anywhere is fine.” 

  
  
  
  
  


When he’s around Jaemin, it feels like a hot air balloon, bouncing on the moon as he holds the globe like a telescope forever searching for a lost cause. Inside that lost cause resides Pasadena’s, the same streets he passes on his bicycle, the same grocery store, hair salon that his mother used to take him when was little. Jaemin never reads like a lost cause, winded cities and stories he tells Renjun when taking a second breath. 

Jeno reads like a book, gentle but brutal as he roars under low tides and downpours. He lets Renjun borrow his textbooks, when his notes aren’t being handed off to Jaemin, they’re in his hands, blood rain tangled like cobwebs and an arrow strikes between his chest. And it’s time to wake up. 

Donghyuck leaves him slow. And it happens fast. Then the letters arrive, and Renjun writes every night. He writes to Oscar Wilde when temptation comes, and there’s blood on his bathroom floor, head in his hands as he withdrawals his screams.

It’s his own coming of age story, and yet why does Renjun feel like it’s the end, when the credit scene rolls in and the cast of characters appear. But he never had his ending laid out like the three sisters of fate. Did he cheat his own story, or was it already written from the very beginning?

  
  
  
  


“Is it easy, falling in love?” 

Jaemin smokes these days. It goes unnoticed and unmentioned. When they’re in the parking lot of Pasadena’s oldest parks, watching moonlight fixate on the hood of Jeno’s Jeep Wrangler. “You’ll have to ask Jeno about it.”

  
  
  
  


Renjun drives, the steering wheel piercing his hand with the turn he takes on the road. Except he’s not driving, and there’s pigmented dreams that he rides along. He doesn’t write that night, to Donghyuck because if he writes, in hopes to build a bridge and rise once again in the midst of Apollo’s sun, the leer of his music. The more the exhilaration returns, when he finds the friends he’s managed to gather over the past few months, miraculously wondering how he hasn’t chased them away yet. There are no saddest lines to write, and so Renjun accepts the hand of Jaemin, reaching for his belly, soft and intimate. And when Jeno kisses the flesh between his collarbones — he breathes once more. And wonders where the last shred of hope went after he collapses. 

Somewhere, in the middle of the suburban streets of Pasadena, the empty page of Renjun’s story bleeds with ink. 

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://mobile.twitter.com/gossamers__) | [cc](https://curiouscat.qa/gossamers_)
> 
> comments and kudos are deeply appreciated!


End file.
